“It is usually badly researched lame-ass wish fulfillment, either dystopian or utopian. Little more. I've become an increasingly firm believer in the notion that having an FH forum on this board is a mistake.”
A subset of AH clichés, future history (FH) clichés describe certain well-worn and implausible concepts which commonly crop up in FH timelines.
It is worth noting that many FH clichés have been around since at least the 1980s, when they were then used to refer to the 2000s, and now exactly the same cliches are used to paint an identical picture of the 2020s or 2030s.
Future history or science fiction related clichés that have become antiquated since the times they were first postulated.
Future map scenarios where the author has simply colored in countries on a world map to show the new super-countries. Bonus cliché cringe points if the basemap is a low resolution bitmap from 2006. If the map is also saved as a jpg, congratulations, you have officially won the FH forum.
Timelines that consist only of endless lists of election results, especially if they are only US elections. No offense, but very few people are impressed by your ability to make up fake percentages. For extra cliché points, present them through Wikiboxes.
Timelines that purely represent (the author's view of) the best case scenario, whether the author realizes they are doing this or not. On this forum, tends to involve the magical Democrat fairies sweeping into power and restoring sanity and freedom to the US with no opposition, establishing socialist paradises everywhere, the world coming under the umbrella of the enlightened Westerners' world government (clearly those brown, black and yellow peoplez cannot be trusted to rule themselves), things like gay marriage and abortion become legal everywhere without any disagreements by sheer force of good-idea-ness, everyone speaks English, and science and technology progress at hypersonic speeds for no other reason than the rationality of the new order. Bonus cliché points if the timeline presents the world becoming atheist as a development that is inherently good without feeling the need to explain why.
Timelines that purely represent (the author's view of) the worst case scenario, whether the author realizes they are doing this or not. On this forum, tends to involve teh ev0l republikans establishing a theocratic apartheid hellhole, Eurabia, GLAWWWWWWBUL WARMING, the Caliphate, Soviet Union 2.0, super-China with super human abuses, totalitarian states, peak oil, pandemics, Malthusian collapses, evil megacorps who do evil things because they're just evil, and nuclear wars that result in ignorant evil post-apocalyptic cults (cos da religious peoplez are cray-cray). Bonus cliché points if huge disasters are sprinkled in just to say “look how shit this world is!” without any real implications.
Timelines where FTL space travel, terraforming and colonization are as easy as walking to the mailbox. But instead of profound changes to our mode of civilization, these timelines just repeat recent colonialism and set it in space. Expect the countries, cultures and economies to be exactly the same as present day in OTL but with some space-sounding settings. Often results in such absurdities as the United Kingdom of Great Britain, Northern Ireland and Zeta Reticuli.
Similar to the above, timelines that superficially include advanced technology just to say “this is the future!!” Bonus cliché points if the singularity “happens” but nobody's life is any different than OTL.
Timelines that are written under the strict guidance of the plausibility police. Nothing interesting happens in the timeline, but unlike the above, this trait is intentional. Tends to simply rehash OTL without anything changing except the year number.
By now you may be thinking “good golly, so much to avoid! What if I just get all of these clichés and reverse them?” Unfortunately you are not the only person to think this. The thing is, averting a Chinese superpower by making it split up in a brutal civil war is not much better. By now we can see through these attempts and are getting quite sick of them. Please realize that there is a middle ground between super-wanks and super-screws, history isn't all about the wank/screw and merger/balkanization dichotomies, and you can focus on areas other than just the place where you live and the places you hear about on the news.
This is What Will Happen In The Future - euio's grand spoof TL, which tried to cram in as much of these clichés as possible.
American Politics Reaches Its Logical Conclusion - Thande's satire of the Wikipedia election box subgenre and American politics.